The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne Part 30

"Oh-h!"

She laughed and pulled me by the arm into her room and shut the door.

"Oh, everything is beautiful, beautiful, and I shall die if I do not kiss you."

"You must be kept alive at all hazards," I laughed; and this time I did not reject her. But it was a child around whom my arms closed. An inner flash, accompanied by a spasm of pain, revealed it, and changed a pa.s.sionate desire to gentleness.

"There," said I, after she had released herself and flown to open the drawers of the new toilette table, where lay some odds and ends of jewelry I had purchased for her. "You have been saved from extinction.

The next deadly peril is hunger. I give you a quarter of an hour."

She came down to dinner in a low-necked frock, wearing the necklace and bangle; and, child that she is, in her hand she carried the silver-backed mirror. I believe she has taken it to bed with her, as a seven-year-old does its toy. She certainly kept it by her all the evening and admired herself therein unashamedly like the traditional Lady from the Sea. Once, desiring to show me the ravishing beauty of a turquoise pendant, she bent her neck forward, as I sat, so as to come within reach of my nearsighted eyes (it is a superst.i.tion of hers that I am nearly blind without my gla.s.ses), and quite naturally slid onto my knee. She has the warm russet complexion that suits her heavy bronze hair, and there is a glow beneath the satin of her neck and arms. And she is fragrant--I recognise it now--of hyacinths. The world can hold nothing more alluring to the senses of man. My fingers that held the turquoise trembled as they chanced to touch her--but she was all unconcerned. Nay, further--she gazed into the mirror--

"It makes me look so white--oh, there was a girl at Bude who had a gold locket--and it lay upon her bones--you could count them. I am glad I have no bones. I am quite soft--feel."

She clasped my fingers and pressed their tips into the firm young flesh below her throat.

"Yes," said I, with some huskiness in my voice, "your turquoise can sleep there very pleasantly. See, I will kiss it to bring you good luck."

She cooed with pleasure. "I don't think any one kissed the locket of the girl at Bude. She was too thin. And too old; she must have been thirty!

Now," she added, lifting up the locket, "you will kiss the place, too, where it is to lie."

I looked for a moment into her eyes. Seeing me hesitate, they grew pathetic.

"Oh-h," she said, reproachfully.

I know I am a fool. I know that Pasquale would have hurled his sarcasms at me. I know that the whole of her deliciousness was mine for the taking--mine for ever and ever. If I had loved her less pa.s.sionately I would have kissed her young throat lightly with a jest. But to have kissed her thus with such longing as mine behind my lips would have been an outrage.

I lifted her to her feet, and rose and turned away, laughing unsteadily.

"No, my dear," said I, "that would be--unsuitable."

The bathos of the word made me laugh louder. Carlotta, aware that a joke was in the air, joined in my mirth, and her laughter rang fresh.

"What is the suitable way of kissing?"

I took her hand and saluted it in an eighteenth century manner.

"This," said I.

"Oh-h," said Carlotta. "That is so dull." She caught up Polyphemus and buried her face in his fur. "That's the way I should like to be kissed."

"The man you love, my dear," said I, "will doubtless do it."

She made a little grimace.

"Oh, then, I shall have to wait such a long time."

"You needn't," said I, taking her hands again and speaking very seriously. "Can't you learn to love a man, give him your whole heart and all your best and sweetest thoughts?"

"I would marry any nice man if you gave me to him," she answered.

"It would not matter who he was? Anyone would do?"

"Why, of course," said Carlotta.

"And any one wanting to marry you could kiss you as you kissed Polyphemus."

"Oh-h, he would have to be nice--not like Mustapha."

I turned away with a sigh and lit a cigarette, while Carlotta curled herself up on the sofa and inspected her face and necklace in the silver mirror. In a moment she was talking to the cat, who had jumped on her lap and with arched back was rubbing himself against her.

Soon the touch of sadness was lost in the happy sight of her and the happy thought that my house was no longer left to me desolate. We laughed away the evening.

But now, sitting alone, I feel empty of soul; like a man stricken with fierce hunger who, expecting food in a certain place, finds nothing but a few delicate cakes that mock his craving.

October 14th.

A week has pa.s.sed. I have spent it chiefly in trying to win her love.

Is she, after all, only a child, and is this love of mine but a monstrous pa.s.sion?

What is to be done? Life is beginning to be a torture. If I send her away, I shall eat my heart out. If she stays, fuel is but added to the fire. Her caressing ways will drive me mad. To repulse her were brutal--she loves to be fondled; she can scarcely speak to me without touching me, leaning over me, thus filling me with the sense of her. She treats me with an affectionate child's innocence, as if I were s.e.xless.

My happiest time with her is spent in public places, restaurants, and theatres where her unclouded pleasure is reflected in my heart.

I am letting her take music lessons with Herr Stuer, who lives close by in the Avenue Road. Perhaps music may help in her development.

October 21st.

To please her I am accustoming myself to this out-of-door life, which once I despised so cordially. Pasquale has joined us two or three times.

Last night he gave a dinner in Carlotta's honour at the Continental. The ladies of the party have asked her to go to see them. She must have some society, I suppose, and I must go with her. They belong to the half smart set, eager to conceal beneath a show of raffishness their plentiful lack of intellect and their fundamental bourgeois respectability. In spite of Pasquale's brilliance and Carlotta's rapturous enjoyment I sat mumchance and depressed, out of my element.

My work is at a standstill, and Carlotta is my life. I fear I am deteriorating.

On Judith, whom I have seen once or twice since Carlotta's return, I called this afternoon. She is unhappy. Although I have not confessed to my thraldom, her woman's wit, I feel sure, has penetrated to the heart of my mystery. There has been no deep emotion in our intercourse.

Its foundation has been real friendship sweetened with pleasant sentimentality. And yet jealousy of Carlotta consumes her. Her _amour propre_ is deeply wounded. She makes me feel as if I had played the part of a brute. But O Judith, my dear, I have only been a man. "The same thing," I fancy I hear her answer. But no. I have never loved a woman, my dear, in all my life before, and as I made no secret of it, I am guiltless of anything like betrayal. In due season I will tell you frankly of the new love; but how can I tell you now? How could I tell any human being?

I imagine myself as Panurge, taking counsel with a Pantagruelian friend.

"I am in love with Carlotta and desire to marry her." "Then marry her,"

says Pantagruel. "But she does not love me." "Then don't marry," says Pantagruel. "But nay," urges poor Panurge, "she would marry me according to any rite, civil or ecclesiastical, to-morrow." _"Mariez-vous doncques de par dieu,"_ replies Pantagruel. "But I should be a villain to take advantage of her innocence and submission." "Then don't marry." "But I can't live without her," says Panurge, desperately. "I am as a man bewitched. If I don't marry her I shall waste away with longing." "Then marry her in G.o.d's name!" says Pantagruel. And I am no wiser by his counsel, and I have paraded the complication of my folly before mocking eyes.

October 23d.

I perceive that the young man of the idiot metaphor was gifted with piercing ac.u.men. Beneath the Jaquesian melancholy of my temperament he diagnosed the potentiality of canine rabidness. No rational being is afflicted with this grotesque concentration of idea, this fierce hot fury waxing in intensity day by day.

I must consult a brain specialist.